Useless to insist, comrade; I have understood; you have the power: so you must be right..…
30 TWO IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS
I
THE Interviewer. — In its fight against Naturalism, or Realism, we recognize, dear Master, that art, that literature at least, at the time of your Nourritures terrestres, with its tendency toward the artificial, smelled terribly musty. But, without going back to it, let us pass on. I should like, I was telling you, to make one criticism of your introduction1, which appears to me important. It seems, if I understand you (and I am thinking particularly of some sentences in your conclusion), it seems, I say, as though man were forced to choose between the Christian position and that taken by Goethe. As though there were not many ways to escape the hold of Christianity without joining Goethe!
I. — I do not say …
He. — And in the first place, when you speak of the “help of Grace,” I think you embody in those words all supernatural intervention, every appeal to any religion whatever. But, even then, man has many ways of exerting himself without going over to Goethe and the field remains clear …
I. — Nevertheless, the examples I quote, of Nietzsche, Leopoldi and Hoelderlin (and I could have quoted many others) should leave no doubt as to my idea. Goethe does not teach heroism, and we need heroes. Christianity can lead us into heroism, of which one of the finest forms is saintliness; but every hero is not necessarily a Christian.
He. — Nor every Christian a hero! Heaven only knows! I know only too many, and you too, who are beyond the pale.
I. — Free thinking does not always retain the indulgent smile of Renan, the sarcasm of Voltaire, or the detachment of France. The non-acquiescence to dogmas and simple integrity of mind has been able to lead many to martyrdom. A martyr without palms, without hope of reward and, for this reason, all the more admirable. Without going that far, let us say that human dignity, and that sort of moral bearing, of “consistency” to which we attach all our hopes to-day, gets along very well without the support and comfort of the Faith. In these recent times, Christians have given fine examples, both Protestants and Catholics, before which we have only to bow our heads; but I hold it a very grave error to think, with a great number of fine minds, that France must and can find her salvation only in attachment to a Credo.
When a ship is in distress, those who kneel down and intone chants address prayers and supplications to the Most-High … that is fine; tears come into my eyes only at the thought of it. And at least they keep back the cries of the women and children, and the crazed rushing about that would disturb the maneuvers of the crew.But just the same, if the ship is to be saved, it will not be by clasped hands.
He. — Montherlant says some daring things in this respect.
I. — Which please me. And wait a minute; I see in him an excellent example of anti-Christianity not like Goethe’s.
He. — You would like from him, don’t you agree, parallels to the Lives of the Saints and The Golden Legend, some biographies that would, in themselves, have nothing legendary about them, which he would write so well! valorous heroes, entirely human, according to his taste (and yours doubtless); among others, the Marshal Strozzi, cousin to Catherine di Medicis.
I. — I remember only in what special esteem he was held by Montaigne who admired in him, at the same time, the warrior of great merit in his “military competence” and the scholar; a very fine passage in the Essays congratulates him on having chosen Caesar’s Commentaries for bedside reading. “They should be,” he said, “the breviary of every military man.”
He. — What Montaigne does not tell us and that Brantôme told, is that Strozzi, as learned in Greek as in Latin, had translated Caesar into the Greek language with “Latin annotations, the finest additions and instructions for soldiers,” says Brantôme, “that I ever saw or that were ever written.”
I. — That should delight Montherlant, indeed.
He. — The account of his death is of a nature especially likely to please him, such as we read it in Vieilleville’s Mémoires. When Strozzi was mortally wounded by a musket shot at the siege of Thionville, on June 20, 1558, the Duke de Guise went to him, Vieilleville tells us, exhorting him to repentance. But you must read the text itself: I copied it; one would hate to change or lose a single word. Listen. He took a note-book from his pocket and read to me:
Then the Duke de Guise, “recalling the name of Jesus — ‘What Jesus, for heaven’s sake,’ said Strozzi, ‘are you trying to bring to me? I deny God. My good times are over.’ And the prince redoubling his pleas told him that he should think of God and that that very day he would be face to face with Him. ‘Heavens!’ he responded, ‘I shall be where all the others are who have been dead for six thousand years’.”
I. — Six thousand years!.. To-day we know that is an understatement.
He. — Wait a minute! Wait a minute! And Vieilleville adds, in his charming manner, don’t you agree? “Everything is in the Italian language.”
I. — I recognize that this ending does not lack grandeur. It is almost as difficult, if not more so, to die well as to live well. But then Strozzi had neither wife nor family with him. Ah! I understand Montaigne’s wishing to die far away from his people, a death all his own, not distorted by pity or sympathy.… It is an article of death that one expects from the great souls under discussion. In the death struggle they relax, let themselves go to the priest who is lying in wait, with the aid of a wife’s objurgations, or a sister’s, or a mother’s. Then the Church is quick to take possession of their past and of their very resistance which at first they had opposed to it.
He. — Yet you admit …
I. — Why yes; I admit all the rest. I give in; I acquiesce, and even, as well as I can, I understand …
He. — It concerns the salvation of souls. Put yourself at their point of view.
I. — That’s all I do, I roared, put myself at other people’s point of view. I’ve done nothing else all my life; to such a degree that it is my own point of view which becomes difficult for me to find again later. And yet that is the important thing. To depend constantly on others in order to judge, form an opinion, is to take the savor from the salt.
He. — “And if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted?” Yes, I know you have been nourished on the gospels. You come back to them in spite of yourself.
I. — Now you annoy me. It is true: I feel you there, on the scent of some sentence that may compromise me.… Mind your own business and simply do your duty as an interviewer. If you try again to make me talk more than I intend to, I shall slam the door in your face. Consider that final.…
Come now! Sit down again. But let us go back to literature. May I ask you in my turn, if during the long time that I have left you, you have progressed in your book.
He. — To tell the truth, no. But it is mellowing. What bothers me is that I should like to say nothing in it that is not essential, general, universal.